Most talk of “momentum” in politics is the lazy prattle of pundits portraying the electorate as some sort of enchanted body possessed by a single spirit. But with Rick Santorum’s boom in Iowa, the lazy prattle is proving correct.
“Momentum” explains Santorum’s rapid rise to the top tier of the Iowa polls, because one fourth of the Iowa electorate is looking for little else than someone to beat Mitt Romney.
Look at the history of the Iowa polls since last summer, and the pattern is clear: Mitt Romney hovered fairly steadily around 20 percent in the Hawkeye state (he was at 24 percent in Sunday’s Des Moines Register poll, while a series of challengers took turns rising rapidly from single digits, briefly took the lead, then just as abruptly collapsed to their old single-digit numbers.
Michele Bachmann was the first anti-Romney, with a slower rise and fall in Iowa than the others. She hit 32 percent in a July Mason-Dixon poll before beginning her steady fall to sixth place in this weekend’s poll.
For Rick Perry, who supplanted Bachmann, first place was easy-come-easy go. Within two weeks of entering the race after the August Iowa straw poll, Perry pulled 29 percent in a Rasmussen poll.
When Perry began withering in the harsh lights of the debate stage, Herman Cain began his unlikely rise. He hit 30 percent in a few October polls, before crashing down to near-zero after he couldn’t shake charges of sexual harassment, extramarital affairs, and policy and political ineptitude.
Newt Gingrich’s month as the anti-Romney lasted from mid-November to mid-December. In that stretch, Gingrich pulled in a third of Iowa Republicans in three different polls of likely voters. But when those likely voters started focusing on Gingrich’s transgressions – personal, professional, and political – he also fell from grace.
I was in Iowa to witness the last days of Gingrich’s moment in the sun. When I spoke with his supporters, most of them were backing the former Speaker of the House not to elevate Newt but to bury Romney.
If a candidate’s support is mostly based having broad support, as I wrote in a December column predicting Gingrich’s collapse, a few small wounds can be deadly. No politician is perfect. This year’s crop of candidates lived through the ideologically compromising gauntlet of the Bush presidency and the bailouts. All the candidates except Ron Paul have either cast the sort of big-government votes (or, in the case of Rick Perry, received the kind of big-government benefits) that caused the Tea Party to strike back at the GOP leadership in 2010.
So the Anti-Romneys rise to the top, and then receive the scrutiny of a frontrunner, which alienates some supporters. Once a few backers leave, the candidate starts falling, and then falling faster until he or she is clearly no longer the best bet to beat Romney. Then it’s over. Momentum is the right word.
The Real Clear Politics chart of poll averages is telling. All of the past Anti-Romneys – Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich – began to plunge, without interruption, to their single-digit base almost as soon as they topped 30 percent in the polls.
Paul is a different story. He certainly gained some of the anti-Romney vote after Gingrich’s collapse, but he has a larger base – closer to 15 percent than 10 percent – than the rest of the field.
So, the question always was who would be the flavor of the month at the right moment? Who would have the momentum on New Year’s Day? Probably because he is the only candidate who hasn’t yet gone through the ringer, Rick Santorum could win Iowa. Because he was the last kid picked for Team Conservative, Santorum might be the last Anti-Romney standing on Caucus Day.
Why is the anti-Romney sentiment so persistent and so strong? A big reason is RomneyCare – his statewide health-care law, complete with an individual mandate, subsidies and a tangle of regulation, that served as the template for ObamaCare. Also, to Tea Party-minded conservatives, Romney somehow represents the dreaded establishment.
But Santorum is an odd choice to “fight the man.” As a member of Senate leadership, Santorum literally was an agent of the GOP establishment during passage of No Child Left Behind, the expansion of Medicare, and the overspending of the Bush era. And it was Santorum who saved liberal, pro-choice Arlen Specter in 2004 from Pat Toomey’s proto-Tea Party challenge.
But, of course, Santorum has so far escaped the full glare of the frontrunner’s spotlight. If he wins Iowa, his record will be picked apart. Likely, he’ll wither, too.
If the anti-Romney forces had somehow held a primary of their own, maybe they could have vetted a candidate ahead of time to withstand close national scrutiny, created a big enough groundswell in Iowa to make Romney an also-ran, and raised enough money to run wire to wire, all the way to California.
But instead, fickle “momentum” will settle Iowa – which is good news for Mitt Romney.
